What's the smallest knive you've successfully split wood with?

B

Brian6244

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Aug 25, 2004
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I know... I know... Small knives, especially folders, are not the first (or second) choice for splitting wood. I also know that when the SHTF you use what you have and for many of us it is impractical or illegal to carry the best tool for the job.

With that in mind I am curious about just how small of a knife you have successfully split wood with (I am assuming the use of a baton as well)? I'm not talking about splitting logs for Grandma's fireplace. I referring to splitting enough wet kindling to get to a dry core and get a fire going that is large enough to then dry out larger pieces with the fire itself.
 
A Gerber LST.

Wood was about an inch to inch and a half, cut into 6 inch lenghts with a Victorinox hiker saw. Snowy day, very wet and I wanted to see if I could get a fire going with just the edc stuff I always have on me. I cut the wood into short lenghts with the sak saw and gently taped the LST into the top end of the sawn wood. By the time I taped it 1/3 of the way down it split easy. Then I quartered the wood, shaved fine slivers and built a little fire. Very slowly I built up the fire using fine stuff.

I like to practice with very minimal edc stuff from my pants pockets. You're right, if the shtf the big bowie at home or the grasfors brucks hatchet ain't gonna do you a bit of good. But the sak and small locking pocket knife and some strike anywhere matches in your pants will.
 
I have this old shrade old timer lockblade, the blade was a 2 and a half inch blade, the knife wasnt very sharp i use it to scrape the magnisium off the doan firestarter well anyway, i stuck it in the wood, bout the size of a silver dollar. batoned it threw and it split it and it didnt brake. still goin strong. the old craftsmenship works well.
 
The blade on my gerber multi tool, its also the smallest I own but it gets a good work out now and then. I seem to use it when I dont want to ding up my pocket knife.
Wade
 
Camillus "scout" pocket knife. The knife was pretty much ruined, but the fire got started. That was the last time I backpacked without a fixed-blade knife. Go lite be damned.

(I now know how to split wood with a saw. Namely: cut limb half-way through its thickness; grasp limb with cut pointing down and give the end a good smack on a rock, log, or hard ground. The cut acts as a stress-riser, and the limb tends to split lengthways down the middle. I have tried this on several species of hardwood and softwood with good success. [It does not work on elm, but that wood is hard to split with steel wedges and a sledge.])
 
My Victorinox Farmer slipjoint. I use the saw in the fashion that Thomas Linton describes, and it's very energy efficient. I've split small firewood rounds with my Allen Blade Pack Pal (3 inch blade) using a baton.
 
emerson cqc8 and a becker necker . the necker seems made for splitting wood.
 
Ontario RAT-3

Wasn't really a survival situation. We were at a campground in NH and bought a bundle of firewood from the guy there but didn't have anything small to get it going. The woods all around camp were picked clean, were a little damp, and you weren't supposed to collect firewood from the woods anyway. I started at the corners of the quartered pieces of wood and carefully used a baton to split 0.5-1" strips off with the RAT-3. It was more just a play-with-a-knife exercise than anything, but it worked. The only wear on the blade was a very tiny ding about 1" back from the tip that easily sharpened out in ~3 min.
 
It would seem that folks are having reasonable success splitting wood with blades of 3" or even slightly less.
 
Smallest I've used was a Becker Necker. As stated above it splits like it was made for it. My daughter has done it with a SAK Huntsman, NOT knowing she shouldn't have. She got the blade halfway through and then it got stuck. I pryed the wood apart with the necker to rescue it and then had a LONG talk with her about it.

Mike
 
I've used a Becker Necker, Spyderco Native III, Mini Manix, Benchmade Pika and the little Fallkniven WM1 with a baton, through max. 60 mm diameter pine, beech and oak with little or no blunting effect. (It wasn't a survival situation, only a little bushcraft.)
 
As a result of the replies in this thread I bought another Ritter Mini Grip (2.88" blade) and I am going to take it out and give it a try at splitting some small branches this weekend. If it performs well enough then I think it may be the new EDC. Since I require this of my EDC I have always carried larger knives in the past but for future EDC but I am hoping to be able to meet my requirements with a slightly smaller, lighter knife like the Mini Grip. We'll see how it goes this weekend.
 
Good luck with that Ritter mini. I hear it's a good blade. You going to have the blade locked or unlocked when you strike it with the batan?
 
longbow50 said:
Good luck with that Ritter mini. I hear it's a good blade. You going to have the blade locked or unlocked when you strike it with the batan?
Click to expand...

That's a good question and one which I have been asking myself as well. I haven't really decided yet and I am certainly open to suggestions.

It would seem to be safer (and probably easier also) to have it locked. I imagine I would have it locked for sure if I was cold and wet with shakey hands and really HAD to get a fire started as quickly, efficiently and safely as possible. However, it would seem to be better for the knife to have the blade unlocked so when I practice with it (like this weekend for example) I may keep it unlocked.
 
Ritter promotes it for batoning with the lock engaged, due to the nature of the lock, it should take considerable impacts, assuming it fails the same was as the arc-lock from SOG you basically have to vibrate the internals apart.

-Cliff
 
Strider PT - needed to make some kindling before we could start the fire. Batoned it through smaller pieces with a bigger piece of wood. No probs. The PT is a super knife!
 
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